Chess will never be solved, here's why

Pruning 1) a4 for any reason is ridiculous.
Because 1) a4 is just as unsolved as 1) e4 is.
tygxc wants to go by human chessplaying doctrine - he constantly dismisses mathematical rigor and objective reasoning.
1) a4 doesn't lose so you can't prune it.
That goes for 1) f3 and 1) Nh3 too.
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if tygxc wants projects whereby Stockfish and other engines 'prune' when one side is getting a big numerical advantage according to the engine's one-dimensional numerical evaluation numbers ... then he could talk about such projects.
Such a project where the pruning occurs with advantage of 0.2 would be ridiculous.
Even an advantage of 1.0 is ridiculous even if that was equivalent to one pawn up - since positions with one pawn up are often draws or even winning for the side that's a pawn down.
If the advantage was +5 or +10 and those are 'pruned' that might be some kind of approximation but that isn't going to happen often enough to make a big enough dent in the task to be done.
Maybe a 'nitty gritty' range of computer-evaluated advantage has been determined whereby there's enough advantage to make a try at pruning but it also happens often enough to take a huge chunk out of the overall solving task.
Or maybe there's no such thing. There's a big Gap in other words.
Betwen often enough and big enough.

@12269

"Because 1) a4 is just as unsolved as 1) e4 is." ++ We have now 39 perfect games opening 1 e4 with optimal play from both sides, all draws. We have zero with 1 a4 and for good reason so.

"tygxc wants to go by human chessplaying doctrine - he constantly dismisses mathematical rigor and objective reasoning." ++ I want to incorporate chess knowledge into weakly solving chess, as is beneficial according to this scientific paper.

Insisting on a proof tree for 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6? or 1 a4 is not rigor, it is stupid.
I am the one that reasons objectively, without disproving by insulting, ridiculising, condescending.

"1) a4 doesn't lose" ++ Correct

"so you can't prune it." ++ Wrong. It cannot be better than 1 e4. Thus we can neglect it.
If black can draw against the better move, then it is trivial to draw against 1 a4.

"That goes for 1) f3 and 1) Nh3 too." ++ Yes, those are trivial too. They draw just the same, but they do not oppose, i.e. strive against the draw. They cannot be better than 1 e4 or 1 Nf3.

"if tygxc wants projects"
++ There is no need for a project with good assistants and modern computers: the 17 ICCF WC finalists and their 2 servers each of 90 million positions per second do it for free.

"advantage of 0.2" ++ Again: computer evaluations like +0.20 make no sense.
The only objective, absolute evaluation is win / draw / loss.

"Maybe a 'nitty gritty' range of computer-evaluated advantage has been determined"
++ Present consensus: +1.00 gives a 50% chance to win and a 50% chance to draw or lose.
However, the provisional, heuristic evaluations like +1.00 play no role.

We now have 110 ICCF WC Finals games, all starting from the initial position and all ending in a certain draw after average 39 moves, and these represent evaluation of 10^17 positions.
The games show that whatever white tries, black has not the required 1 sequence of moves to draw, but 4-5 different sequences of moves to draw. So it is redundant.
Even if a double error were found in one or a few of the 110 games, then the result still stands: chess is a draw and we know sequences of moves to achieve the draw.

You explain very well that you are entirely ignorant of what a proof is, and that if your non-proof had multiple errors in it you would still be 100% convinced by it. Thank you for being so open about your lack of understanding.

@tygxc always ignores refutations of his reasoning.

Let me illustrate.

For N = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...} define the sequence of questions Q(N) like this:

Q(N) = "If N games were played between two world class centaurs (engine assisted human) using current engines and it was a draw, would that be a proof that chess is a draw?"

@tygxc has stated that he believes the answer to Q(106) and Q(110) is "Yes".

@tygxc, which is the least N such that the answer to Q(N) is "Yes"?

There have been many attempts to dissect what tygxc does.
But its beginning to look like tygxc just wants to apply what he's learned as a chess player.
Or been conditioned to build his chess playing on.
There's probably various analogies to describe it.

Yes, he reasons like a chess player picking moves - trying to convince himself of what is right - then claims that he has proved that he has the right move.

I disagree about the arrogance - he has ignored all input by people who understand what he doesn't.

And to be fair - tygxc is far less arrogant and conceited than the person who just got muted twice by chess.com.
That's if tygxc is arrogant and conceited at all.

That could be regarded to be tunnel vision and obstinacy as opposed to arrogance.
Unlike that other person - tygxc never tries to say or pretend he is 'superior' or better than anybody.
@Elroch - this is meant as a little joke:
Can you see tygxc someday saying?
'Oh I get it now. The square root argument is invalid - 'nodes per second' is ridiculous - 106 draws was contrived in a special context - and simply concluding and pruning out opening moves that don't lose is shallow and invalid too.'
We wouldn't believe him.
Right?

I've made it simpler for him. If he is honest, he can answer the very precise question in my (edited) post above.

pls answer

Thanks Lola. Note the the 2 x -1 you gathered for your altruistic efforts, which means at least two anti-social misfits plague this thread.

It's been looked at in detail at various points but you're quite right to raise the questions again. Personally I don't think that creating a machine to solve chess by the method of tracing every possible line is in any way useful. There is simply so much of it that, in practice, there would be no way to prove that a mistake hadn't been made, in programming, in retrieval, in data analysis etc. Such a machine couldn't advance the cause of solving chess in a deductive way. All it would do is provide some more evidence.

I believe it's necessary to approach the problem heuristically, which places me firmly opposed to some of the more innocent contributors here.

@12279

"how long can a chess game go until someone gets an advantage and how long can the opponent prolong not getting checkmated?"
++ The ongoing ICCF World Championship Finals now has 110 draws out of 110 games and they end in draws in average 39 moves. https://www.iccf.com/event?id=100104

"How many calculations would it need for that to be "solved"?" 
++ Weakly solving chess needs to consider 10^17 positions = Sqrt (10^37*10 / 10,000).
The 17 ICCF World Championship finalists looked at 1.9*10^17 positions = 90*10^6 positions/s/server * 2 servers/finalist * 17 finalists * 3600 s/h * 24 h/d * 365.25 d/a * 2 a

"chess games do have a max possible move count with the 50 move rule" 
++ The 50-moves rule plays no role at all. 
Games end in draws in average 39 moves, long before the 50-moves rule can trigger.

Referring to my previous post, in my opinion. if such a course were taken, using present computing speeds it would take billions of years on the fastest computer we have, so that even using a million computers in parallel wouldn't help much. I do think, however, that in order to curtail the amount of unnecessary calculation, it would be absolutely necessary to impose some kind of limit on numbers of moves with no pawn advance or piece exchange. However, how would we know what such a limit SHOULD be without already solving chess? This is just one of the many important objections to the brute force method of solving, which is unfortunately supported by some here.

@12277

'Oh I get it now. In 1000 years computers will find that 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6 is a forced checkmate in 580 moves for white and 1 d4 g5 is a forced checkmate for black in 398 moves.'
Then you would have reason not to believe me.

Actually, in 1324 years.

I don't think I'm in any way conceited. It isn't conceit to know I'm cleverer, for instance, than you. It's realism. "Conceit" may better apply to some others here. Talking to people such as yourself, who are incapable of understanding logically based ideas, does tend to bring about a degree of arrogance but that's only natural. When you've proven, time upon time, that you have no understanding of complex points, not because I find them complex but because people like you find them too complex to follow, it's only natural that your opinions and those of people like you should be ignored.

get the sw running first. then do a doughboy (smooshy) solve. then straighten the kinx as one goes. let go a the book theory...for now. cant jump from abc to xyz. needta make some words outta the middle 20 letters. well completely describe it later. and elroch ?...quit tryn sooo hard. let stuff come to u.

Games end in draws in average 39 moves, long before the 50-moves rule can trigger.

wha-what ?? 50move rule (2-ply) is when no piece captured AND no pawn moved right ? now what does that hafta do w/ a 39move game again ?

btw...using the 50move (100ply) rule what it the longest possible game ? they say its 5898.5 moves.

brute force method

BFM is abt to become yesterday.

That's what engines used to think about the Greek gift sacrifice, until their horizons improved considerably.

And that's the whole point...humans and engines are not good enough to determine what moves have no compensation. Tygxc freely admits this when he says that engine evaluations don't matter, only reaching the tablebase...

The problem is, if you are using evaluations that are not correct enough to matter, then the engine(s) is/are pruning imperfectly, and reaching the tablebase that way is meaningless and proves nothing.

This is pretty obvious and not hard to understand. Tygxc proposes to make a decent guess by today's standard of play and then just call it a scientific proof. That's like toasting a pop tart and calling it a pizza. It's square and tastes nothing like pizza, but you can slice it up and try to give it to people anyway...